Bill Hand: New Bern Woman’s Club transforms junky Union Point

Published: Sunday, January 19, 2014 at 04:51 PM.

As we mentioned last week, when you wander around that little but ever-so-useful Union Point Park, you have the Woman’s Club to thank.

At least for its first birth.

The city-owned land had become — to put it politely — fallow by 1930. While today you will see flowers and swing sets and pavilions and trees, in that day you saw junked cars and bed springs and trash.

At about the same time, it seems, the Woman’s Club was decaying.

That organization, founded in 1905, was on its own hard times. The club had proven a vital force in the city: Its membership had been on the front lines providing food and clothing during the Great Fire of 1922, for instance. But now membership was falling off fast, with few new faces and many of the current ones turning in resignations.

Not that a face can actually turn in a resignation, mind you. Unless it appears carrying it in her teeth. This is what I get for trying to take a flowery turn with my keyboard.

Doris Moore was elected president of the club in the fall of 1931 and she was determined to turn things around. It was a tall order, with the Depression two years old and showing no sign of going away. She decided that an inspiring project the women might handle could be just the thing.

As we mentioned last week, when you wander around that little but ever-so-useful Union Point Park, you have the Woman’s Club to thank.

At least for its first birth.

The city-owned land had become — to put it politely — fallow by 1930. While today you will see flowers and swing sets and pavilions and trees, in that day you saw junked cars and bed springs and trash.

At about the same time, it seems, the Woman’s Club was decaying.

That organization, founded in 1905, was on its own hard times. The club had proven a vital force in the city: Its membership had been on the front lines providing food and clothing during the Great Fire of 1922, for instance. But now membership was falling off fast, with few new faces and many of the current ones turning in resignations.

Not that a face can actually turn in a resignation, mind you. Unless it appears carrying it in her teeth. This is what I get for trying to take a flowery turn with my keyboard.

Doris Moore was elected president of the club in the fall of 1931 and she was determined to turn things around. It was a tall order, with the Depression two years old and showing no sign of going away. She decided that an inspiring project the women might handle could be just the thing.

She brought her most-motivated members together for a little think-tank session. According to a Woman’s Home Companion Magazine article from 1934, Mrs. S.L. Dill “sarcastically” suggested cleaning up Union Point.

By “sarcastically,” I’m guessing the writer meant that Mrs. Dill was trying to put her president in a pickle (provide your own rim shots, please) by suggesting an impossibility. Like saying, “You could try to find some intelligence in Washington.”

Even so, it wasn’t a new thought. The project had been dreamed of before, but no one had ever had the ambition or means to tackle it. Doris seized upon it. In a way, now was the perfect time: Money was scarce, but able-bodied men were not, and many of them were without anything to do.

The city’s Board of Aldermen okayed the project, as long as it didn’t cost them anything, and even offered a few city workers when they weren’t needed elsewhere.

By February of 1932, men were clearing away trash and cutting down weeds.

The club also got free help from professional gardeners, and the director of Wilmington’s parks came to help design what Union Point would become. Organizations and individuals donated trees and flowers, and the mayor donated the construction of a lily pool.

By the end of the year, the park was ready and open.

But the Woman’s Club wasn’t finished. They had a $4,000 fund built up and decided they were going to build themselves a clubhouse.

Like the mother of Proverbs 31, the women were frugal and exact, eschewing a contractor and hiring carpenters on their own and scavenging the city for raw materials.

It was finished and dedicated in April 1933, with the women having $7.21 left of their original funds.

That building would stand until the late 1990s, serving not just as a meeting place but as a cultural and social gathering center and “party central” of the USO during World War II. A lot of young ladies would meet their future spouses here, swaying in their arms.